VIEWPOINT pubs.acs.org/est
Legitimate Conditions for Climate Engineering Richard Owen University of Exeter, U.K. decades of knowledge and incorporated into trials of efficacy and safety. We do not have this for the emerging science of climate engineering and are therefore compelled to proceed under conditions of ignorance. The response is that we should establish strong research governance processes, developing and then employing tests of efficacy and safety before any decision to deploy (i.e., proceed with caution) in the same way we have built up understanding of pharmaceutical efficacy and safety over time and incorporated this into the tests required of medicines before use. This is to be recommended.
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n September 13th scientists announced preparations were underway for the first UK field trial of climate engineering feasibility.1 The proposed trial will be modest: it will pump water through a 1 km high balloon-tethered hose, to assess the feasibility of reflective particle injection high into the atmosphere, mimicking the temperature-reducing effects of volcanic eruptions. But it has stimulated considerable debate about whether research in this controversial field should be undertaken at all, and if so the conditions under which it is acceptable to proceed. Responding, the President of the UK’s Royal Society, Paul Nurse, replied that there should be research on both the efficacy and safety of geoengineering:2 “One would not take a medicine that had not been rigorously tested to make sure that it worked and was safe. But, if there was a risk of disease, one would research possible treatments and, once the effects were established, one would take the medicine if needed and appropriate. Similarly we need controlled testing of any technologies that might be used in the future”. His comments, and specifically this analogy to pharmaceuticals, raise important questions concerning the conditions under which we decide to deploy controversial technologies such as solar radiation management. Pharmaceuticals indeed go through a rigorous testing process before they are authorized for use (“data before market”), but this is because we know the harmful effects to look for and there are well-established test methods to quantify these, built up over r 2011 American Chemical Society
’ THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE There is however an important caveat to this approach. Despite our best intentions, it may only be once deployment has actually occurred that any nasty surprises surface. The history of nasty surprises is long, from CFCs to asbestos.3 Indeed surprises such as thalidomide were a major driver of regulation for pharmaceuticals, which in turn strives to ensure these effects do not occur again. But this happens after the fact. Regulation is often blind to that which it has not encountered before. Such unanticipated effects might not emerge for solar radiation management, but this will always be a gamble for which the probabilities can never be known, a point acknowledged by the Royal Society in 2009. The unintended side effects of many well-intentioned innovations have not been predicted. Here there is an analogy with pharmaceuticals: despite tests, who could have predicted that the birth control pill would cause environmental endocrine disruption?4 The argument is that research can help us rule out the technology, on the basis of efficacy, safety or both. But what happens if it is not ruled out? What if, after careful consideration of risks and feasibility, solar radiation management becomes a serious option? Who then would be prepared to place a bet for which the stakes can never be fully known? Perhaps the seriousness of climate change would make deployment a gamble worth taking. But who would make that decision? Who would have the authority to make a (possibly intergenerational) commitment to solar radiation management? Who would decide that conventional attempts at carbon management and climate change mitigation had proved insufficient or unsuccessful? Who would negotiate the distribution of impacts across the globe (beneficial or otherwise, known or unknown) that might result? Who would compensate those who suffer for the collective good? What are the conditions for such planetary technological gambles? Received: September 21, 2011 Accepted: September 28, 2011 Published: October 10, 2011 9116
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es2033185 | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 9116–9117
Environmental Science & Technology
VIEWPOINT
In his essay on the Imperative of Responsibility5 Jonas wrote “One would not deny the statesman the right to risk his nation’s existence for its future if really ultimate issues are at stake. It is in this manner that awesome but morally defensible decisions about war and peace come about when, for future’s sake, the stake is the future itself’. He added that ‘this should never happen because of the enticement of a wonderful future but only under the threat of a terrible future”. The supreme “malum” justifies a collective wager. This has been the catalyst for many technological wagers in the past, of which the push for mass production of penicillin in World War Two is arguably one. Would the prevention of a terrible future (a “climate change tipping point” for example) be a legitimate condition for a collective gamble on a geoengineering solution? Perhaps, but this presupposes that this condition has been collectively arrived at, and that there is a mechanism for this to be achieved. This does not currently exist. It is particularly important for approaches such as solar radiation management which may have impacts that may be trans-national and unequally distributed in nature. It is here that Nurse’s statement “one would take the medicine if needed and appropriate” becomes critical. Who will decide there is a need, that climate engineering is an “appropriate medicine”? The conditions for making such a technological wager legitimate, democratic, and equitable must be explicit. For we are naive to assume the decision to administer a medicine by a physician is based on efficacy and safety alone. And we will pay the price if we fail to acknowledge that there are limits to knowledge and ignore the lessons of history.
’ REFERENCES (1) http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2011/22-spice.asp (accessed June 10, 2011). (2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/08/geoengineering-research-royal-society (accessed June 10, 2011). (3) http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/environmental_issue_ report_2001_22 (accessed June 10, 2011). (4) Jobling S., Owen R. Ethinyl oestradiol: Bitter pill for the precautionary principle. In: Late Lessons from Early Warnings II; European Environment Agency, (in press). (5) Jonas, H. The Imperative of Responsibility; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984.
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